Youth culture used to be incredibly tied to car culture. Cars meant both rebelliousness and personal freedom, allowing young people to travel and explore, whether through weekend road trips, racing or 50’s era drive-thrus.

But not anymore.

Gen Y doesn’t need cars for freedom, especially when smartphones allow them to access the entire world at their fingertips. There are 3 hypothesis on why this is happening:

Money is tight and Gen Y has been forced to reevaluate the necessity of major purchases

Young people are driving less

It’s not just happening in the U.S. — this is a global trend: “Having grown up with the Internet, they no longer depend on a car for shopping, entertainment and socializing and prefer to spend their money in other ways.”

1) Start-ups represent emerging bets at the intersection of technology and culture

2) Clusters of start-ups help to identify what’s broken in current industries and where there’s opportunity for disruption.

I think viewing start-ups from this perspective is a clever approach at “predicting” future consumer needs and how brands can provide solutions. Good job to the Invention Strategy team; I’m excited to see what they come up with next.

Like this:

DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published May 6th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.

A recent article from The New York Times points to a Gallup survey that says, “…for the first time on record, most Americans said they did not believe today’s young would have better lives than their parents…”

As Keanu Reeves so astutely proclaimed in The Matrix, “WHOA.”

This is big news.

It’s big because people generally talk about the U.S. as the land of opportunity. If you can “make it” anywhere in the world, this is the place. It’s the reason both my parents emigrated to the United States and the reason many foreigners continue to do so today.

But things are changing.

People used to believe that a middle class family who worked hard and saved money could afford a house, an education and a comfortable life.

Well, now, maybe not so much. We need to keep in mind some of the challenges we face as a society:

We’re still dealing with the effects of the housing bubble, and now it looks like an education bubble is on the horizon

So what does this mean for Latinos, especially those still in other countries, like Mexico, who are considering moving north?

How does this affect their perceptions – do they think of the U.S. as the BEST option or just a BETTER option for themselves and their families?

These are big questions and the answers may reveal themselves over time. The most recent Census data tells us that 1 in 6 Americans, roughly 50.5 million, are Latino. This accounts for more than half (56%) the national growth since 2000. And even though the larger share of our growth is coming from births instead of immigration, Latino newcomers are still a substantial portion of the market.

It will be interesting to see if growth over the next 10 years matches projections or if immigration will start to decline.

What do you think? Is the American dream still alive and well? And what impact does this have on people who are considering the U.S. as their future home?

On another note, I highly suggest reading this NYTimes article, “The Experience Economy,” as a companion to this post. It’s a good observation of the past century’s shift in values.